Episode #69 - A White Guy In DEI Ft. Mike Lynch

Mike Lynch, a prominent voice in the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIAB) space, shares his perspective as a middle-aged white man advocating for change. Through his experiences, he shares the challenges and opportunities in creating an inclusive workplace culture.

Key Takeaways:

• The importance of white men actively participating in DEIAB conversations and initiatives.

• Overcoming the fear and hesitancy often associated with addressing sensitive topics.

• The role of vulnerability, self-reflection, and accountability in driving meaningful change.

• Practical steps for individuals and organizations to become more inclusive, such as building awareness, acknowledging privilege, and creating accountability partnerships.

• The need to raise expectations and empower white men to engage authentically in DEIAB work.

• Believing in the shared human desire for acceptance, love, and belonging can foster understanding and appreciation across diverse groups.

Mike encourages listeners to embrace vulnerability, challenge biases, and actively contribute to creating a more inclusive and equitable society.

Episode Transcript

Mike, it's not a surprise to me, but maybe a surprise to others that you're a white dude. And you may not fit the mold of who people normally associate with those who are on this journey, but that's been kind of your secret sauce too, hasn't it? 

It has been, yeah. You're not the first one to have that reaction, when I tend to show up at an organization, they sort of say, “hang on. I thought this was supposed to be a talk or a training or a workshop or a coaching session on diversity, equity, inclusion.” And I'm the middle-aged gray-haired white guy who comes in the frame for that. I think it's a unique perspective to bring to this conversation and more people who look like me need to be a much bigger part of this conversation going forward. 

For the naysayers, what do you, a middle-aged white man, know about the struggles and challenges minorities and others face that may make their lives more difficult than yours? Why should they listen to you? 

Yeah.  I don't claim to be the expert on all things diversity, equity, and inclusion. What I can be, is an expert on the middle aged white guy who's been in a bunch of these conversations given my roles that I've had over my career working in HR and working with executive leaders, many of whom have wrestled with a lot of these conversations around diversity, equity, and inclusion. One of the things I like to do is just kind of bring the perspective of: my belief is that we as white men need to step way up into this conversation and show up in a different way than we have up until now.  

I learned early on in this work, one of my peers in the diversity practitioner group said it to me really bluntly and really straight, saying, “hey, you can't teach me about my own oppression.” That's absolute truth, and nor do I see that as my role, what my role is in this conversation, is to bring more white men into the conversation. The facts are the facts, most of the organizations both on the corporate side, nonprofit side, and government side are run by white men. And so I think there's a place that we need to play to move this conversation forward. 

I'd love to hear your thoughts on why you think there is that hesitancy? I think I've seen a fear of saying the wrong thing, of expressing an idea the wrong way and offending someone. Is there more to it than that?  

I think fear is definitely a factor in there, for sure, in that, you know, there is such a thing, right, which we don't talk a lot about, sort of, out there of this, you know, notion of, you know, there is such a thing as this, like, white male culture, right, and meaning, you know, and there's a lot of crossover and overlap with other sort of cultures and things like that, but like, what that really means, at least it means to me, right, is this, you know, how white men have been kind of brought up, raised in a bunch of different ways and things like that. But there are things where there's expectation. And this goes from beyond white men, but for men: around being able to kind of go it on your own, solve problems on your own, not ask for help, don't show vulnerability. 

When you take a look at the issues at hand it's a really tough problem to solve, right? It's more about advancing the conversation is the way I sort of look at it. And so a lot of times business leaders come to it and sort of say, hey, we have a problem we need to solve. A lot of times those same things come up that you mentioned, right? There's this fear of I don't want to say the wrong thing, or it's not my fight to fight, or I'd rather just not say anything than and let others talk about this as opposed to me jumping in and offending somebody.  

I think in order to solve this problem, we have to be vulnerable. We have to be reflective. We have to be introspective. And those are not typically natural sort of behaviors for most men and white men either in that sense.  

Say that someone here is listening and going, I do have courage, I do wanna speak up, I wanna advocate, I wanna go beyond being an ally to being all in. If that's the case, what sort of culture has to be in place in any organization before that person can speak up. How would you go about having that conversation? 

I think the notion of vulnerability is definitely at the crux of this and being able to take the risk, be courageous, make yourself vulnerable in these conversations. I think if we say, oh, at least for the white leader, a white male leader to step up and say things like, well, the reality is that's the thing that most non-identifying men and non-white people go through all the time, they're constantly in that. It's a little bit of like, hey, just walk in their shoes a little bit on this thing and take that risk.  

Your silence is my silence, right? And not saying the thing or at least attempting to say the thing is in my opinion, so much worse than not taking the risk and not engaging in the conversation, right? And yeah, you do put yourself out there and potentially get some backlash in this space. But I mean, open yourself up of like, hey, I'm coming at this from a humble place. I'm coming at this from a place of learning, from a place where I would love some feedback as I approach and wade into this topic and being open to that feedback that comes back your way. 

I still step in it. I step in it all the time and say the wrong thing or don't do it. And what I'd rather do is I'd rather err on the side of stepping in it than not saying anything at all. Because by me just sitting silent or tolerating certain behaviors, it potentially shows that I don't care, I'm not engaged. I'm willing to tolerate bad behavior in all of those spaces. So I do think it's worth being courageous and think about it the other way. Like I said, at the beginning of this, just put yourself on the other side of the table, maybe at this juncture and say, hey, there's people out there who are being courageous minute by minute in this space. 

I think about any difficult conversation that you need to have. It's rarely the conversation itself that I think gets people in trouble. It's the preparation and lead into that conversation that gets people in trouble. You can say a lot of tough stuff. You can say a lot of uncomfortable things or ask for difficult feedback, but you can do it well by prefacing that conversation and saying the tone, saying the stage for it to occur. It's when we just jump in, without context or without that lead in, without that clarity as to the purpose as to why I'm doing this and what the outcomes I'm trying to achieve are and how I welcome you into the conversation with me and such as me as a one way conversation, but it's both of us, all that stuff, that's where I think the rubber meets the road. Would you agree? 

 We tie ourselves up in knots around the anticipation of that conversation. A lot of times when I coach clients in this space, you just have to say the thing and then take a breath and lean back and watch what happens in the space around the conversation that opens up a little bit.  

The one thing, Joel, that I use a lot of times with clients, it's a pretty simple framework where the first two steps is, the first one is all around awareness. So building awareness around just noticing things that are happening around you. Notice how you interact with the world. Notice if people are holding back other than you, right? 

This is eye-opening. I always describe myself as if I'm the goldfish in the proverbial goldfish bowl swimming in the water, right? Like it's a white man's world there's so much that's been set up and designed for me. It's really tough, but if you really start to pay attention, you can really start to see things and notice things that are going on.  

Then the second thing is the second step in the framework is all about acknowledgement. So acknowledgement of that privilege or that place that you're coming from. So sometimes it can seem awkward, but a lot of times I would encourage people to have the conversation or start a conversation by saying, hey, as a cisgender white man, or as a white person, here's what I notice. As a man, here's what I notice, things like that. That signals I'm aware of the frame and the lens that I have. This is not about centering my white male-ness, but at least it's calling it out and putting it into the conversation. I think it feels a little awkward at first when you start to do this, but at least I acknowledge where my identities are. And so therefore, I can recognize sort of where someone else's identities are in this space as well.  

I think in these conversations that this technique tends to help you then launch into the next part of the conversation. 

I think about what we do at Atana, we focus so much on the things that lead to true behavior change. That's what we're talking about here too, trying to get these individuals- many of them white men who are running these companies- to behave differently. So how do you move someone from current behavior to a different behavior? We've found in order to get behavior change to happen you need to first change the attitude of the individual. We move them to that place then, do I have the ability to change? That ability to change can only follow that attitude, that desire to change. So if we have the right desire, the right attitude, and then we have the right ability, the last one is there the right social support to change? Here's giving you the abilities now, the words, the actions that you haven't had before, and then surrounding them with social support, that's where we see ultimate behavioral intent and behavior change occur. Maybe you haven't used those words before, but does that feel right to you? 

It does feel right. I sort of alluded to this model that I've created, and it feels similar to this model, right? The steps around this are  

1. Awareness  

1. Acknowledgement  

1. Atonement 

1. Accountability 

1. Alignment and appreciation.  

And so a couple of things to point out, accountability, right? In this, it's really around creating accountability. And this is in your words, like the social support that's there. And it's creating accountability, you have this new awareness, you start to acknowledge and  understand what this awareness has and what is the kind of unearned advantage that you bring to the organization or bring to everyday life, right? Otherwise known as privilege, which has sometimes been weaponized a bit lately. 

 Then you continue to move through and get to the point of accountability. The one important thing I say about accountability is, the first instinct around accountability is to go to the black woman on your team and say, oh, can you hold me accountable for this and make sure that I'm not having the same mistake. No, I don't want that. That woman has so much on her already that she's dealing with. What I like to create and encourage is for other white men to hold each other accountable to these conversations, right? Create an accountability partner. And it's amazing to see what happens when other white men in this particular conversation start to hold each other accountable in this place, because that's where you see a lot of the real change start to happen in these spaces.  

You need to be careful that they are not speaking in a vacuum and sort of saying how great they are to one another about how great they're doing in this.  

The last part of this model is this notion of alignment and appreciation. You realign, you have this new awareness. And then you sit back a little bit or take a moment to appreciate this new found awareness and where you are. That appreciation, I think that to me is a little bit of the attitude shift that happens.  

So, our language may be a little bit different, but I think the concepts line up fairly well. 

So, someone's listening right now and they're going, I gotta do something different. How do I become more inclusive?  

I think there's a thing of advocating for more work needs to be done. We had the reckoning, I would call of 2020 with George Floyd, which was a really horrible thing that happened. The silver lining that came out of that is it got people paying more attention to the space. 

What you saw, which is typical of a lot of corporations, is they jump right in and start saying, we need to do this and that. These organizations were focused on advancing or promoting or developing women, people of color in these spaces, right?  

Where I think the big miss was in this and why we're seeing some of the backlash that we're currently seeing is there was not enough focus and attention paid on the leaders and making sure that they were ready to handle this. If you go back to my premise of most leaders are white males, where the miss was, was not having or asking white men to stop, pause, and be reflective and go and be introspective. And so I think now, like going forward, be vulnerable and be courageous and step up and say, this is a place where I want to get involved and get engaged in and start learning and start reading and start asking questions in this space. There's some really great work that's out there that people can take a look at and podcasts to listen to and things like that, but just get curious about that. That's really what launched me into this work. 

It reminds me of a romantic relationship where the goal is to build a better partnership. You plan activities and conversations to work towards that goal. However, the real value lies not just in the planned outcomes, but in the conversations and journey itself. It's the act of having those conversations that brings you closer together. 

You can't solely focus on the destination without appreciating the journey. This seems analogous to the struggles some organizations face with DEI initiatives. They try to parachute in a DEI executive to "fix" things and drive specific outcomes. But the conversation and process of inviting others into the work is actually the value-add, not just the end goals the executive is tasked to deliver. Is this an accurate perspective on why some DEI roles struggle? 

I think you hit that nail on the head right there. I work with a lot of fellow diversity practitioners who are amazing, excellent, and do really good work. And the one thing I would say is they're exhausted right now. They feel like they're just sort of pushing a bunch of things uphill. There was this amazing freedom of, come in and do everything and just tell us what you want us to do. And we'll do everything. What's been missing from that is exactly what you're talking about, is the conversations.   

How would you define all in? If you look at someone and go, that person is all in. What does that really mean? 

Yeah, I think before getting to that, the whole notion is moving from ally to all in. Until now, leaders often say "I'm an ally, I'm good, I show up, I do the things." Or "I have daughters, so I get it." That's the thing - being an ally is not enough anymore. We need to go all in on this conversation to move it forward. 

Going all in means being vulnerable in this space. Declaring yourself a beginner, a learner, open. Moving through to all possibilities, becoming aware of your own biases influencing you and your decision-making. It's about continuing to open yourself up. Being vulnerable takes courage, letting go of fear in this space. 

I'm wondering what are some things you really wanted to cover that I haven't asked you about?  

That's a good question. I'll tell this in a little bit of a story of something I've experienced lately. Part of the work that I do is to go around and give talks and talk to different organizations about different things. Just to kind of help them get to this place of better engagement in the space. And I recently went in and was invited to go give a talk to a group of DEI practitioners around a different angle to go after this problem.  

I asked to attend this conference to give a talk. There were, I, and again, this is me making some assumptions here. So, I'll just caveat this, but from what it looked like, I was the only white man in attendance at this conference. It wasn't a huge conference, probably about a hundred or so people. 

And so I go to go up to give my talk. And on my way up to the podium to give my talk, I got a standing ovation from the crowd, which, again, I will say, felt really good for my ego in the moment. But it hit me, I was like, oh, what is this about? And so, I put my remarks aside and said, let's talk about that a little bit. What is going on that I am getting this reaction, I haven't even said a word yet? 

And what really struck me coming out of that conversation is that the expectations around white men in this conversation are so low that for me to just show up at this conference to be able to come in and give remarks was something foreign. 

And so my takeaway from that is one, for the white men out there, the barrier to entry into this conversation is low. And then for my non-male, non-white colleagues out there, you have to raise the bar in expectations for white men on this. I mean, there's... 

You know, there's much more, mean, obviously, but there's, white men are capable, we're capable of having this conversation and nor do we need to be handheld into this conversation. We need, we should be thrust into it and be able to kind of hold our own in this space. So, I guess my takeaway is we just need to, we just all around need to raise the bar of expectation for this. 

What’s something you believe that if everyone else believed too would make the world a better place? 

I believe deeply in my core that, people are people and they want a lot of the same things, right? They want acceptance, they want love, they want to be seen, they want to be heard, right?   

If we can get to this place of just having the honest conversations and just sort of moving through some of these conversations instead of what I think we've been taught to do a little bit just through some of this is some of these performative acts and things like that we tend to do. If we can just have some of those conversations and while they may start out to be tough, it's amazing the magic that happens sort of once you start to get through these conversations and a lot of this just kind of pours out and there's a whole new understanding and appreciation and realigning of attitude that kind of happens around these, that really happens. And so, in the end, I truly do believe that everyone has this ability to kind of go fully in on these conversations and have them. And a lot of the work that I do and a lot of others do is just kind of help facilitate that conversation and build some tools to kind of have that. So they're tools that are out there, they're tools that can be learned in this space, but have the courage to go out and start the conversation in these spaces. 

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Mike Lynch is an expert in helping leaders embrace inclusivity and their role in driving diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and belonging (DEIAB) efforts. What sets him apart is his commitment to guiding fellow white men to evolve from allies to active leaders championing DEIAB within organizations.

As the founder and principal of MJL Consulting Group, Mike draws from over 30 years of corporate and nonprofit experience, including executive HR leadership roles at Capital One Financial Corp. Colleagues praise his ability to push leaders to shift perspectives, enabling the self-awareness and clarity necessary for inclusive leadership.

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